


Yesterday's Graffiti

by mockingjaywands



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M, Top - Freeform, josh dun - Freeform, joshler - Freeform, twenty one pilots - Freeform, tyler joseph - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:29:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6531226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockingjaywands/pseuds/mockingjaywands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh loves graffiti, but not much else. Tyler loves Josh, or at least a memory of him.<br/>He didn't realize that a memory of Josh would be all he had left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday's Graffiti

**Author's Note:**

> (this is loosely based off the switchfoot song, yesterdays)

Josh was a tattoo artist with a passion and admiration for graffiti. As a result, he was always working on stencils of some kind, and he always showed me them. With the exception of one. He said he didn’t want me to see it because it wasn’t finished. Whenever I asked him how it was going, he always muttered something about how it was missing something. Then he disappeared for a long time. I had presumed that he was gone to work on it, but now I’m not so sure.  
I never got to see that stencil until after.  
One night, Josh called me and begged for me to go on a graffiti run with him. A “graffiti run” typically involves a trip to the gas station, laden with Red Bulls and chips and candy, and then driving under the cover of moonlight to the old trainyard so Josh could gawk at the graffiti. He usually took pictures; the flash of his camera reminded me of stars dying in a mini supernova. I didn’t realize until much too late that Josh himself was a star; heading silently and unseen towards a supernova of his own. That night, I just stared at the graffiti, and at Josh. This was the most alive I saw him; in a way, it hurt a little bit. I knew I should feel glad that this made him happy, but a little tiny part of me said I should be able to make him look this alive, every day. And that made me feel like a failure, because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t. When he had checked out all the new graffiti, he got back into the car, and his eyes shone as bright as his camera had flashed. Whenever I looked into them, I felt that dangerous edge of pain. To distract myself from it, I turned away to look at the cloudy night sky. There were no stars out. In that void, I saw something I had grown reluctantly accustomed to; it was the same sort of emptiness I saw in Josh’s eyes. I knew there was supposed to be light in them, I knew it the same way we knew there were stars in the sky. But the clouds in Josh’s eyes never seemed to leave unless he saw the graffiti.  
“Josh, why do you love graffiti so much?” I asked.  
“Because each design tells a story we’ll never know, and I can easily believe that each story is better than mine,” came the answer, floating out of the darkness; made of darkness. I looked at Josh’s outline, just a shapeless shadowy form, and then back at the sky.  
“Do you love anything as much as you love graffiti?” I wondered aloud, afraid of the answer.  
“No.”  
I didn’t talk again after that. The dull ache in my chest reminded me of Josh’s lifeless eyes.  
At some point, I was in between sleep and awake, and Josh began to talk. At first, I couldn’t hear the words, then the broken melody of his voice solidified into stories I wished I could unhear.  
“Sometimes the happiness I used to carry with me feels like it’s been buried, deeper than the grave I dug for my mom’s roses, deeper than the hole I found my dog’s chew toys in. It feels like it’s as far down as the floor of an ocean, and the light up here seems as dark as it, too.” There was a pause while the piece of Josh I carried in me- ever since we met- tore. I worried that he’d hear it, and I closed my eyes, as if they would prevent me from hearing the rest of his tired, defeated monologue.  
“I think you’re sleeping.” He was quieter now. His voice was filled with the kind of sadness that seeped into every crack and crevice of my body with a bone-crushing cold. “But that’s okay. I’m not sure I could tell you this while you’re awake. I couldn’t look into your eyes, so different from mine, and say it. It used to be that our eyes were mirrors; I could look at your life and feel it reflected within me. For some reason, you kept your colors while mine slowly seeped out of me. I don’t know why.” His breath hitched, and I knew that that was a lie. Something horrible had happened to him, and I yearned to know what it was. So I could fix it, somehow. But I wasn’t sure I could handle knowing.  
“You know how I used to let you choose the colors to go with my graffiti stencils?” I could hear the wistful smile in his voice, fragile as mist in a valley of thorns.  
“And then we’d go to the old trainyard, back when we were fourteen, and you would spray the stencils, using whatever color you felt like that day. And you would tell me. You’d say, ‘I feel like yellow.’ And that color would be part of the design. Or, ‘I’ve been feeling like the forest,’ and you’d spray green. That summer had been filled with the rattle of spray paint and your thoughtful gazes, always studying it carefully, too carefully. You liked the idea of theme; I itched to grab colors at random and spray the design chock full of them.” He gave a quiet laugh. “That’s why I always let you color in the design. And then that fall began, and I think that’s when my colors left me. We never added our own graffiti to the trains; just sat back and watched new stories accumulate. I didn’t even let you choose new colors. I don’t anymore. I don’t feel like adding them in; all my designs would look better in black and white.”  
That hurt a little bit, and maybe he realized what he had said; what it had implied, because he lapsed back into silence. We used to tell each other everything, and then, like a switch was thrown, Josh had shut down. I don’t know what had happened to make him feel like the only time he could tell me his secrets was when I couldn’t hear them. When the world was steeped in darkness and I, in sleep. Josh started talking again, but I worried he’d see the tear tracks shining on my cheeks and shut him out, trying to fall asleep and forget.  
I felt Josh shake me awake, and I looked at his eyes; mistaking them for a stranger’s. Once again, the light was gone. I looked away, out the window, and saw my house.  
“Good night Josh,” I said quietly, reaching my hand up to touch his cheek. Then I heard all my designs would look better in black and white and dropped my hand. I walked into my house. As I slid under the covers, I realized why that had hurt so much. Ever since the light had left him, the colors had left him, graffiti had been the only thing he seemed to love. And that’s why when he let me choose colors for his designs, I felt like we were real friends again. I felt like he trusted me again. Our friendship felt distinctly one-way now; it was like trying to make a corpse come alive again, clutching their body and refusing to let go when they wouldn’t breathe again. And Josh was the corpse; I the desperate fool, unable to let go. I thought that by doing this, I could keep him with me. And I was wrong. But I didn’t know how wrong I had been. However, the next day I became brutally aware of my oblivious thoughts. I went to Josh’s house, as was the custom when we have our graffiti runs. We would drink coffee and play Mario Kart while we recover from the relatively sleepless night. When I stepped into his house that bright morning, I was greeted by silence. The windows were open, a ghostly white curtain moving slowly in the apathetic breeze. Figuring that Josh was still asleep, I went up to his room.  
He was gone.  
On his bed, there was a white square of paper, and it almost matched the color of my skin when I picked it up. My legs shaking too hard to hold me up, I sank onto his bed. 

"Tyler, please read this. Please know that this isn’t your fault," was written on the front. In disbelief, I unfolded the paper. As soon as I had, I desperately wished I could go back, to last night, to yesterday, to when we were fourteen and in that trainyard. That stupid trainyard, shaking up bottles of spray paint like the careless kids we were.  
"When I woke you up, and you refused to touch me, I knew that you had heard everything I had said tonight." My heart sank as I read the word “tonight”. My brain formed a thought; half-finished as if it could protect me from the awful truth.  
"I had hurt you. But I was too stupid too numb to realize. To realize that what I was saying, you’d take as your fault. It’s not your fault. By the time you read this, I won’t remember you. It sounds harsh, and I hate writing this so much, but it’s true. I’ll have turned cold, as cold as my mind is was. The truth is that I was raped." I dropped the paper. I felt weightless, numb, and sore all at once. Bending down to grab it again, I forced myself to read on. "That’s why I’ve turned dead inside, because I was no longer pure, no longer like you. I felt disgusting. I hated myself so much after it had happened. It happened in the fall, the fall I talked about tonight. How fitting, that the season seemed to be named after my descent into depression after it happened.  
I’d like to thank you. You always tried to cheer me up, you were always there for me. And I pushed you away. I’m sure you feel like my inability to talk to you freely was your fault. But it was mine. You’ve been nothing but helpful and caring to me, and I don’t deserve it. I don’t think anyone understands how worthless I’ve felt since it I was raped.  
I’m sure you remember the stencil I’ve been working on for awhile now, the one that I can never finish. It won’t be a memory for you like it is to me, now. I know what it was is missing. Color. Please be too careful in finding the perfect color. Let it match your mood. But I want it to match your mood before you read this. Don’t make it black and white; I don’t want it to be as ugly as I am. It’s under my bed. Please take it to the trainyard and spray it there. The design is of a man laying down, a river spilling out of his head and forming a small world under him. There’s a fan above him. You can’t miss it.  
Tyler, I just want you to know that I love you. I’ve loved you since I met you, and I almost told you. But I couldn’t offer it to you because love is supposed to be pure, and I am anything but. I’ve heard that we’re pure in death, though; our sins washed away. So I guess that’s why I can tell you know that I love you. With all the emotion my shriveled, dead heart can provide; I love you. Please try to forget me. I know I already have."

I ripped the note to shreds, only after I had read it over and over again, unwittingly memorizing it. I scoured it for any shadow of a lie; any proof that this was fake, that Josh wasn’t dead. Hadn’t been raped. Hadn’t committed suicide. I ran back to my house, unable to feel anything but the cold tears streaking down my face. I didn’t know why I was crying; I hadn’t felt the sorrow yet. I was still clinging to an ugly, twisted version of hope like it was a moldy string preventing me from falling into the yawning black chasm below. Any moment now and the string would break. There was a stretch of time where I didn’t remember anything aside from going to the trainyard and spraying Josh’s design onto an empty car with practiced fingers. And then I was at his funeral; surrounded by his family members, clad in suits and ties, made for the living, not for the dead, but Josh was wearing a suit, too, and then there were cut flowers being presented to everyone. I refused to take one, because cutting the flowers seemed like a cruel waste. Dead decorating the dead. There were speeches and music and empty words spoken; breath and musty air recycled, but I didn’t hear them. Suddenly, it was time for everyone to say their goodbyes, one by one, but not at the podium in the front. I was the last one to go up to Josh, no, his body. It wasn’t Josh anymore. His mind was gone. I stared into the casket at his closed eyes and fake make up. The string holding me up broke and I started to cry in earnest, feeling every tear like a piece of my soul being ripped from my body. As if by giving it up, I could make Josh’s heart beat again.  
“You’re free now, Josh,” I said. “You asked me to paint your graffiti with colors, but I didn’t. I used black and white, because you told me those colors were you, and that you were ugly. I don’t care what happened to you, but you were never ugly. And that’s why I did it. You were beautiful.” I took one last look at his serene face, so different than the tormented one that had haunted me just yesterday.  
“You told me to forget you, but I can’t. I’ll always remember you, just like yesterday. And until I’m with you again, I suppose I can try to carry on. You asked a lot of me in your note, but I only ask you one thing: Please enjoy being free.”


End file.
